File talk:Microsoft logo.jpg

For a company as big as Microsoft, operating worldwide and known as the world’s number one software company, it is evident that Microsoft plays a huge role in the computer software industry. Microsoft was first founded in 1975 and first incorporated in 1981. Microsoft started off as primarily a supplier to hardware manufacturers such as IBM, since then Microsoft has come a very long way. In the year 1990, Microsoft became the first software company to reach one billion dollars in revenues and has continued to grow with their windows software. Not only is Microsoft a major part of the computer software industry, it is also involved in cable television (MSNBC), business diagramming and technical software, and the development of computer-like devices such as mobile phones, pocket organizers, digital televisions, digital cameras just to name a few. Microsoft is ever expanding in both realms inside and outside the computer software industry which also leads it to acquire many critics. These critics believe the company’s goal to be acquiring control of every delivery channel of information. “Microsoft has the power to exercise predatory and exclusionary control over the very means for people to access the Internet and all it represents," says Scott McNealy of rival company Sun Microsystems. With Microsoft as a dominant company in computer technologies worldwide, it affects society both positively and negatively.

Issue:

Microsoft’s ability to manipulate the consumer and suppress other firms and what governments, individuals and other firms can do about it.